[Episcopal News Service] The Episcopal Church is episcopal because it has bishops among its leaders and the upcoming 79th General Convention will consider many aspects of their formation, election and role in the church.

The word “episcopal” comes from the ancient Greek epískopos, meaning overseer. The first session of the first General Convention, held in 1785, consisted only of the House of Deputies. However, it adopted a constitutional provision establishing a separate House of Bishops, which joined the convention at its second session in 1789.

The Task Force on the Episcopacy, formed at the request of the last meeting of convention, has submitted 34 resolutions. They are in reply to convention’s mandate that it study “the election, appointment, roles and responsibilities of the episcopate.” To do so, they began at that 1785 beginning.

Diocese of Connecticut Bishop Ian Douglas, task force chair, told Episcopal News Service that the group had a huge job and “we had a lot of different constituencies represented.”

The Very Rev. Gary Hall, a task force member who is the interim rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara, California, said that range of constituencies made for “some real differences of opinion on the task force.” However, most members came to a “consensus place” on most of the issues, he said.

Some might think that the first part of the task force’s mandate – to examine the fact that lay Episcopalians and clergy elect their bishops – would have been a bit of a rubber stamp. However, task force member and Diocese of Fort Worth Deputy Katie Sherrod said it was a very serious discussion, especially when it was set in light of another of the task force’s mandates: to “pay particular attention to the recent trend away from a diverse House of Bishop,” and devise ways to encourage diversity. The task force, she said, learned that some Anglican Communion provinces in which bishops are appointed have more diverse groups of bishops than the Episcopal Church.

In the end, the task force concluded that diocesan clergy and laity electing their bishops “is in our DNA and there are reasons for that, and they matter,” she said.

And, the task force agreed that dioceses should hold the main responsibility for electing their bishops, Douglas said, but sought ways to help give them the resources they need.

There are some resolutions that offer what Douglas called technical fixes in this area, such as A142 and A145, which urge dioceses to have bishop search and election policies and canons in place long before they are faced with an episcopal election.

Another part of the proposed solution is a requirement (via Resolution A144) that dioceses “engage in the process of a missional review periodically but no less often than prior to engaging in an episcopal search process.” Douglas said the things the review would examine range from discerning what God is calling Episcopalians in that diocese to do, to such questions as can the diocese afford a bishop and a diocesan staff that are paid fairly and make its assessment to the churchwide budget. Such reviews would also include conversations with neighboring dioceses about “collaboration and a sharing of ideas and visions,” the resolutions says.

“I think this is a hugely important question. As we know, there are dioceses and there will be an increasing number of dioceses that are not viable or might not be viable, and there is no vehicle currently for the wider church to say what should we do in that place,” Douglas said. “So, we often continue to spend a lot of money, a lot of time and a lot of energy electing bishops for places that might not even be able to afford a bishop.”

Resolution A156 would change church canons to require that the diocese share its review results with the presiding bishop and the Executive Council for their feedback. Their assessments would then have to be sent to each bishop exercising jurisdiction and diocesan standing committees in advance of their consent to a call for an election.

Douglas that the missional review process is meant to help the wider church be able to give “meaning consent” to such a call.“We’re going to have to as church engage that reality one way or another,” he added.

How to help the church elect bishops who will have successful episcopates was part of the task force’s work, Sherrod said, noting that former Maryland Bishop Suffragan Heather Cook’s “shadow obviously loomed large over the resolution that put us into existence.” Cook killed bicyclist Thomas Palermo in December 2014 as she was driving and texting while drunk. Cook had been was arrested in 2010 on a drunken-driving charge. Cook disclosed the arrest to diocesan leaders during the bishop suffragan search process, according to a diocesan statement released after the Dec. 27 accident, but the entire convention that elected Cook on May 2, 2014, however, was not told about it.

The task force made recommendations on how and when background checks should be done, and who should see the results. For instance, there is no churchwide canonical requirement for background screening when a diocese elects a bishop, the report notes. Resolution A148 proposes to change that.

Responding to the diversity question, the task force notes in its report that the House of Bishops is “overwhelmingly male and white.” Moreover, the members note, the church does not know much about the demographics of those priests who stand for election as bishops. Thus, the task force said one of its primary recommendations is that the church require (via Resolution A138) dioceses holding episcopal elections to report the demographic characteristics of the applicant pool, finalists and elected bishop. Such statistics, it said in Resolution A139, “will allow more empirically-grounded, evidence-based recommendations for enhancing the diversity of the episcopate in future years.”

The task force asks in Resolution A140 that dioceses at the beginning of their search process be given the section on diversity included in its Blue Book report, as well as other materials on diversity.

While not all on the task force agreed, the group is also proposing “pilot Board for Episcopal Transitions” of bishops, priests or deacons, and lay people. The board, described Resolution A147, would operate for six years to work in collaboration with and help the current the presiding bishop’s Office of Pastoral Development, which currently has oversight of the bishop search processes churchwide.

The introduction of lay people, priests and deacons into the bishop search process at the churchwide level is an new effort and it is continued in the task force’s Resolution A149 that urges the College for Bishops to have its board of directors jointly nominated by the presiding bishop and president of the House of Deputies, elected by the House of Bishops and confirmed by the House of Deputies. Such a process, the resolution explanation says, “likely to result in a board more equally comprising the orders of ministry of the church, all of whom have a vital stake in the calling and formation of bishops.”

Hall said the resolution’s choice of the word “urge” is an example of the compromises that the members made in the midst of what he called “the entire range of opinion” in the group. The word choice came at the end of a long process in which some task force members, including him, advocated for requiring the new process for the college’s board.

The inclusion of all four orders in those processes, Sherrod said, “was all grounded in our belief that the election and formation of bishops should include all four orders of the church because bishop are elected in a diocese, but they are elected for the whole church and so the whole church has a vested interest in every bishop that’s elected.”

“And it should be the whole church, not just bishops, because bishops can’t know everything or understand everything or see everything that the whole of the body [of the church] can bring into the room.”

The 2015 meeting of convention also told the task force to address the issue of discernment. The members said in their report they were concerned about the lack of a formal process “for a person to test an initial call to the episcopate as an order” similar to “the prolonged, informed, prayerful process that we employ for a call to the diaconate or priesthood.” Still, the task force wanted to be clear it was no calling for a pool of pre-approved candidates.

“We envision a process where the result is clarity for the seeker, and not the conclusion of a group as to whether this individual ought to put him or herself forward,” the task force said. “This discernment is not pre-vetting. It is a pastoral response to an individual who seeks a safe place to wonder about a specific call. The result of the experience and what to do with the information is solely up to the individual.”

Douglas said “expressions of clericalism and patriarchy” sometimes prompt people to “see the episcopacy as the cherry on top of the ordination sundae.” And, they don’t say out loud that he or she feels called to be a bishop because they are afraid, feel it is unseemly or have a sense of what he called “false humbleness.”

“We think that those kinds of attitudes are not going help make a healthy House of Bishops, get our best leaders, nor lead to a diverse and representative House of Bishops.”

The task force wants a clear discernment process, he said, to encourage the entire Episcopal community to raise up and nurture all sort of people for the episcopate.

[Anglican Communion News Service] Bishop of St. Asaph Gregory Cameron will ordain a 22-year-old as deacon June 30 – a year younger than that normally allowed in the church’s rules. Archbishop of Wales John Davies has given special permission for Dominic Cawdell to be ordained deacon – making him the youngest ever ordinand in the Church in Wales. He is one of thousands of people being ordained as deacon or priest in the weeks around Petertide, a traditional season of ordination.

[Anglican Communion News Service] A group of 10 theologians from five continents have met to discuss insights on evangelism and how the Anglican Communion engages in evangelism in different contexts. The group, from the Global South, met in Dallas this month for the event hosted by Bishop George Sumner and the Diocese of Dallas. Some were from majority Muslim contexts where overt evangelism is not possible and new believers are brought into the faith through friendship and humanitarian service.

The Rev. Paul Walker, rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, talks to Presiding Bishop Michael Curry in front of the city’s statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee in September. The statue had been shrouded in a tarp while the city dealt with challenges to its decision to remove the statue of the Confederate general. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopal Church leaders already had begun thinking about spiritual responses to racism in 2015 when a shock of events underscored the urgency of that discernment.

A young, white supremacist gunman with a fondness for the Confederate flag opened fire June 17, 2015, at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine people. That massacre, along with news reports of arsons at black churches and police shootings of unarmed black men, helped fuel passage at the 78th General Convention of Resolution C019, which called on church officers to develop a churchwide response to racial injustice, and up to $2 million was approved for that work.

The Charleston massacre, in particular, left bishops and deputies “feeling a sense of shock and outrage, because I don’t think they thought that that could happen in 2015,” Heidi Kim, staff officer for racial reconciliation, told Episcopal News Service.

Kim had been on the job about a year at that time. Since then, she has helped lead a team of church staff members in carrying out the mandate of Resolution C019 through a framework agreed on by church officers, including Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, who was elected in 2015 as the church’s first black leader.

The racial reconciliation team developed the framework into Becoming Beloved Community, which now is the centerpiece of the Episcopal Church’s racial reconciliation efforts. How to follow through with those efforts will be the core question before the Racial Justice and Reconciliation Committee when it convenes at the 79th General Convention next week in Austin, Texas.

But racism and racial healing are such big topics, both socially and spiritually, that the discussion is expected to expand well beyond a single resolution, or even a single committee, to include meetings, events and exhibits in all corners of the convention center from July 5 to 13.

The Rev. Stephanie Spellers, canon the the presiding bishop for evangelism, reconciliation and creation, delivers the keynote speech Jan. 17 at the All Our Children Conference in Columbia, South Carolina. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

“The world needs us to get serious about racial healing, reconciliation, and justice,” said the Rev. Stephanie Spellers, the presiding bishop’s canon for evangelism, reconciliation and creation care, said in an email. “That only happens as we tell the truth about our churches and race, proclaim the dream of Beloved Community, practice Jesus’ way of love with one another and repair the breach in our society and institutions.

“I’m eager to see our church sharing the wisdom and resources to support even more local adaptation and engagement with this vision.”

Resolution C019 was only the most prominent in a series of resolutions on racism in 2015, and it was hardly General Convention’s first time addressing racism. Resolutions dating back decades have helped guide the church as it responds to racism and atones for its own complicity in racial injustice and support for racist systems, from slavery to segregation.The mandate in 2015 sought to carry those efforts a step further.

“The abomination and sin of racism continue to plague our society and our Church at great cost to human life and human dignity; we formally acknowledge our historic and contemporary participation in this evil and repent of it,” C019 reads. Another resolution, A182, called on the church to address systemic racism at all levels.

Racial reconciliation also was identified by General Convention in 2015 as one of three priorities for the 2016-18 triennium, along with evangelism and care of creation. All three priorities will be highlighted in Austin in three joint sessions of the upcoming General Convention.

Those sessions, named TEConversations, will feature three-member panel discussions on each topic. The TEConversation on racial reconciliation will kick off the series on July 6, from 10:30 a.m. to noon, with panelists Catherine Meeks, who heads the Diocese of Atlanta’s anti-racism commission, the Rev. Nancy Frausto, a “Dreamer” from the Diocese of Los Angeles who was brought to the United States from Mexico as a child, and Arno Michaelis, an author and former skinhead. (The evangelism discussion is July 7. Care of creation will be the topic July 10.)

Meeks also is founder of the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing in Atlanta, Georgia. The center will hold a luncheon on racial healing at noon July 6 at the Hilton hotel across the street from the Austin Convention Center.

Other exhibits on racial healing are planned for the same day in the exhibit hall, Kim said.

“It’s actually kind of an exciting time,” she said. “The convention will have an opportunity to talk about what it is we’re trying to engage in.” And she expects those conversations to be lively and illuminating, as well as instructive for the coming triennium.

For example, one resolution before the Racial Justice and Reconciliation Committee (B004) questions whether “anti-racism” should be replaced with a term that better encompasses the spiritual transformation sought in this work. Diocese of Atlanta Bishop Rob Wright is listed as the proposer.

Another resolution (A138) focuses on the church’s track record of diversifying its leadership. The resolution, submitted by the Task Force on the Episcopacy and assigned to the Churchwide Leadership Committee, would give dioceses 60 days after a bishop election to submit demographic info on all nominees.

“Progress towards the church’s goals and aspirations in the diversity of its leadership, including bishops, is dependent to a significant extent on gathering critical data to inform plans to achieve those goals and be faithful to those aspirations,” the Task Force said.

The church’s work on Becoming Beloved Community is detailed at length in the Blue Book report generated by church officers in response to Resolution C019 from 2015. Becoming Beloved Community is broken into four parts that are illustrated as a labyrinth: telling the truth about our churches and race, proclaiming the dream of Beloved Community, practicing the way of love in the pattern of Jesus and repairing the breach in society.

That framework was finalized in early 2017, Kim said, and it was released to the church that May. About half of the $2 million approved for this work has been spent so far, to implement Becoming Beloved Community at the diocesan and congregation level, and implementation is expected to continue in the new triennium, Kim said.

Resolution D002 would approve $1 million to provide grants to local ministries engaged in racial reconciliation work. That kind of direct financial support is not included in the scope of the past resolutions that produced and have supported Becoming Beloved Community.

Leona Volk greets Presiding Bishop Michael Curry during Curry’s September 2016 visit to to South Dakota, where Episcopalians were involved in demonstrations against the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Photo: Mary Frances Schjonberg/Episcopal News Service

The importance of such efforts has been punctuated over the past three years by the continued shock of current events, from high-profile police shootings to the violent clashes last year in Charlottesville, Virginia, between white supremacist groups and counter-protesters. Kim said she also sees the need for racial healing in how Americans respond to migrants on the Mexican border. And environmental issues often are interwoven with race, as seen in the Standing Rock Sioux’s fight to preserve the tribe’s drinking water and Native Alaskan efforts to protect caribou breeding grounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

She also hopes Episcopalians will embrace the work of racial reconciliation as a personal spiritual journey, not as a way to shame those whom we may see as racist.

“We all have our own work to do, so we can’t just externalize the problem of racism,” she said. “We all can be better at being reconcilers and healer.”

Spellers said she finds hope in the visionary work of General Convention in measures such as Resolution C019 from 2015, and she expects that vision to carry the church through the next two weeks of discernment on systemic racism.

“When I look to our church’s work so recently begun toward Becoming Beloved Community, and when I hear today’s fierce racial justice and healing conversations among bishops, deputies and dedicated networks – I am deeply encouraged.”

“Liturgical Resources 1: I Will Bless You, and You Will Be a Blessing” was one of the rites General Convention authorized in 2015 for trial use. Photo: Church Publishing Inc.

[Episcopal News Service] Three bishops have proposed a resolution on same-sex marriage that “seeks to ensure that all of God’s people have access to all the marriage liturgies of the church, regardless of diocese, while respecting the pastoral direction and conscience of the local bishop.”

Long Island Bishop Lawrence Provenzano, Pittsburgh Bishop Dorsey McConnell and Rhode Island Bishop Nicholas Knisely said in a news release late on June 28 that their Resolution B012, is “an attempt to move the church forward in an atmosphere of mutual respect, reconciliation and the love of Jesus Christ.”

The resolution continues to authorize the two trial-use marriage rites first approved by the 2015 meeting of General Convention without time limit and without seeking a revision of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

“Given our particular time in history, this resolution provides a way forward for the whole church without the possible disruption of ministry that might be caused by the proposed revision of the Book of Common Prayer,” the three bishops said.

Resolution B012 proposes that access to the liturgies be provided in all dioceses, without requiring the permission of the diocesan bishop. Instead, congregations that want to use the rites but whose bishops have refused permission may request and will receive Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight (DEPO) from another bishop of the church who would provide access to the liturgies. DEPO is a 14-year-old mechanism devised by the House of Bishops for congregation that disagree with their diocesan bishops on matter of human sexuality and other theological matters.

Access to the rites has been a sticking point from the beginning in a small number of dioceses.

General Convention in 2015 authorized the two marriage rites for trial use (Resolution A054) by both same-sex and opposite-sex couples. The bishops and deputies also made the canonical definition (via Resolution A036) of marriage gender-neutral.

The task force is proposing (via Resolution A085) that convention require all bishops in authority to “make provision for all couples asking to be married in this church to have reasonable and convenient access to these trial rites.” It also would have convention say that bishops will “continue the work of leading the church in comprehensive engagement with these materials and continue to provide generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this church.”

Episcopalians who support that effort have been active ahead of convention. Claiming the Blessing, which formed in 2002 to advocate for the “full inclusion of all the baptized in all sacraments of the church, according to its website, has published an advocacy piece. Some Episcopalians in the Diocese of Dallas have developed a website called “Dear General Convention” that includes videos and written stories about people who cannot be married in that diocese.

The task force’s Resolution A085 also calls for adding the trial use liturgies to the Book of Common Prayer. And, it proposes changes to the prayer book’s other marriage rites, prefaces and sections of the Catechism to make language gender-neutral.

The Episcopal Church includes 10 dioceses in civil legal jurisdictions outside the United States that do not allow marriage for same-sex couples. Since church canons require compliance with both civil and canonical requirements for marriage, convention in 2015 did not authorize the trial liturgies for use in those dioceses.

Five Province IX diocesan bishops and one retired bishop representing the dioceses of Ecuador Litoral, Ecuador Central, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Honduras had warned the task force that if convention makes changes about marriage that would force them “to accept social and cultural practices that have no Biblical basis or acceptance in Christian worship,” the action would “greatly deepen the breach, the division and the Ninth Province will have to learn to walk alone.” The bishops of Colombia and Puerto Rico did not sign the statement.

To address their concerns, Resolution B012 also calls for a Task Force on Communion Across Difference, “tasked with finding a lasting path forward for all Episcopalians in one church, without going back on General Convention’s clear decision to extend marriage to all couples, and its firm commitment to provide access to all couples seeking to be married in this church,” the three bishops’ news release said. The task force would seek a path consistent with the church’s polity and the 2015 “Communion across Difference” statement of the House of Bishops, prompted by bishops who objected to convention’s actions on marriage.

Five bishops, three who refuse to authorize the rites and two of the five bishops who signed the Province IX statement, said on June 28 that they will implement Resolution B012 if it is passed.

“Should the proposal before us pass, we would entrust in charity congregations that do not read Holy Scripture in this way to the care of other bishops in the Episcopal Church with whom we remain united in baptism,” they wrote. “While we cannot endorse every aspect of this proposal, we will be grateful should it help us all to continue contending with one another for the truth in love within one body.”

Provenzano, McConnell and Knisley praised that pledge. In addition, they said, “since the canons of the church state that General Convention may set terms and conditions for trial use rites, the terms and conditions specified in this resolution have by extension canonical force. All bishops are obliged to abide by these terms and conditions, as by canon law. We believe that they will hold if challenged.”

The proposing bishops contend in their news release that their proposal “allows conservatives to flourish within the structures of the Episcopal Church, but not at the expense of progressive congregations in conservative dioceses. While at first glance it may sound unnecessarily complex, it is a ‘middle way’ that makes room for all in one church.”

A previous version of this story gave the wrong name for the Diocese of Pittsburgh bishop. This version corrects that error and cladifies that the proposal would require bishops to grant all requests for Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight.

[Episcopal News Service] Supporting local food growers, carbon taxes and offsets, opposition to environmental racism and Episcopalians’ continued participation in the Paris Climate Agreement are some of the stewardship of creation and creation care resolutions set for discussion at the 79th General Convention.

“There will be a bumper crop of environment-related resolutions coming before the General Convention in Austin in July. Such abundance reflects the coming together at the level of the whole church of the work of many individuals and organizations who have been faithfully working away, in many cases for decades,” said California Bishop Marc Andrus, co-chair of the Advisory Council on the Stewardship of Creation, in an email to Episcopal News Service. “Now these environmental efforts by Episcopalians are connecting up and gaining currency as a focus area in the Jesus Movement, along with racial reconciliation and evangelism. It is a signal moment for ministry in the Episcopal Church, and this is certainly true with respect to environmental activism.”

Most of the environmental stewardship and care of creation resolutions are listed here. In September 2016, Presiding Bishop Michael Bruce Curry identified care for creation as one of the three pillars, along with reconciliation and evangelism, of the Episcopal branch of The Jesus Movement.

The 79th General Convention officially gets underway July 5 at the Austin Convention Center and runs through July 13. The 78th General Convention created the Advisory Council on the Stewardship of Creation during its meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2015.

That year the Science, Technology and Faith Committee put forth a resolution to consider the impact of climate change and practical ways for parishes to mitigate and respond to environmental issues, out of that resolution, it created the advisory council, said the Rev. Stephanie Johnson, co-chair of the advisory council and rector of St. Paul’s in Riverside, Connecticut, in a telephone interview with ENS.

The advisory council is composed of one person from each province, organized regionally as “consultative groups,” tasked with implementing a program to develop parish and diocesan resources for teaching the theology of stewardship of creation and for supporting practical applications of local ecologically responsible stewardship of church-related properties and buildings.

The council also oversees a small grants program to support innovative environmental projects and oversees three environmental justice sites in Alaska, Los Angeles, California and the Dominican Republic.

In 18 months, the advisory council received 100 grant applications and funded 40 projects. “It shows a real hunger to engage,” said Johnson.

The advisory council prioritizes innovative projects that can serve as a model and be replicated elsewhere. For example, it awarded a grant to the organizers of last year’s 40-day River of Live Pilgrimage, an intentional community near Charlottesville, Virginia, that’s experimenting with permaculture and Honoré Farm and Mill, which bakes communion bread from ancient strains of wheat. Honoré will provide the communion bread for the General Convention Eucharists.

Resolution A008 calls for the continuation of the advisory council, but reconsiders the consultative groups. It may make sense, said Johnson, that people organize by watershed or area of interest rather than provinces.

Over the years, General Convention has passed more than 50 resolutions addressing environmental stewardship and creation care. This years, the Advisory Council on the Stewardship of Creation submitted 14 resolutions (read its Blue Book report here), many strengthening previous resolutions, some addressing more contemporary concerns.

Resolution A011 opposes environmental racism, or the environmental injustices low-income and marginalized communities face, including greater risks from the effects of climate change and health risks associated with proximity to extractive, manufacturing and waste disposal sites.

Resolution A014, recognizing the amount of travel done on behalf of the Jesus Movement, asks General Convention to direct the presiding bishop’s office to draft a policy requiring the use of carbon offsets by the Episcopal Church Center and that such a program be tested and piloted during the triennium for the work of the Episcopal Church, including the travel of its staff, standing commissions and interim bodies. Resolution C020, calls on the church to support a national tax on carbon-based fossil fuels.

“Carbon offsets for travel is part of the realization that we have to pay the cost of what we do, the travel that we do,” said Johnson, adding the church needs an analysis of the real cost of meetings and needs to pay for it.

Resolution A018 calls for a further advancement of the House of Bishop’s 2011 Pastoral Teaching on the Environment commitment to “advocate for a fair, ambitious, and binding climate treaty,” make every effort to fully and completely participate in future meetings of the United Nations Conference of Parties on Climate Change as an active, faithful and engaged voice for all of God’s good Earth. It also calls on dioceses, parishes and individuals to commit to the Paris agreement.

An Episcopal delegation led Andrus has represented the presiding bishop at the annual United Nations climate talks since 2015, when nations, including the United States, negotiated and reached the Paris agreement.

“I and the other Episcopalians who were in Paris heard first-person witness to the seriousness of climate change for everyday people’s lives from Anglicans living in Pacific Island nations. Already, in 2015, these Anglicans were experiencing the destruction of villages where they and their ancestors have lived for millennia,” said Andrus. “And again, when the House of Bishops met in Alaska in September of 2017, we heard Episcopalians who rely for their lives on the salmon runs tell what wildlife biologist affirm – the salmon runs have decreased by more than fifty-percent in a generation. While this decrease is due to a complex of factors, climate change and warming oceans is a major reason for the decline.”

The Paris agreement calls on the countries of the world to limit carbon emissions voluntarily, which will require a decrease in dependence on fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy sources; and for developed countries, those responsible for the majority of emissions both historically and at present, to commit to $100 billion in development aid annually by 2020 to developing countries.

In June 2017, as part of his “American First” strategy, President Donald J. Trump announced the United States’ withdrawal from the international agreement saying it undermines the economy and places the United States at a disadvantage.

“President Trump made a campaign promise to take the United States out of the Paris Agreement. For me, though there is added difficulty and no smooth path ahead, I can see that the president’s actions have energized United States citizens to act. As perhaps the major grassroots movement to keep the U.S. commitment to Paris even without federal participation puts it, ‘We Are Still In,’” said Andrus.

“We will stay in the Paris agreement by a robust coalition of businesses, cities, states, regions, faith bodies and tribes working together. As environmental ethicist Larry Rasmussen said recently, ‘There is no greater transformation ever undertaken in history than that of the move from an industrial, extractive-industry-based life to a sustainable life.’ The role of faith bodies in this is crucial and indispensable.”

Bread & Roses, a ministry of Trinity Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, Virginia, has partnered with International Rescue Committee to hold cooking demonstrations at a city farmer’s market aimed at promoting nutritional cooking techniques and vegetables grown by refugees living in Charlottesville. Bread & Roses was backed by Mission Enterprise Zone grants. Photo: International Rescue Committee

[Episcopal News Service] The Most Rev. Michael Curry, in his three years as presiding bishop, has regularly described Episcopalians as being part of “the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement,” underscoring the church’s call to evangelism.

“I believe that we had a move toward increasing our work in evangelism and church planting even before the election of Michael Curry as presiding bishop,” said the Rev. Frank Logue, an Executive Council member with a longtime focus on evangelism. Curry has further elevated those efforts since 2015, Logue said.

General Convention approved $1.8 million for church plants and Mission Enterprise Zones in the 2013-15 triennium, and $3.4 million was allocated for such ministries from 2016 to 2018. The Evangelism and Church Planting Committee, which Logue chairs, has been assigned a resolution (A005) that would approve $6.8 million in spending over the next three years to build on recent successes of these “holy experiments.”

Some students in Appleton Episcopal Ministries’ 2017 session of its Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School learn to play chess. The ministry benefited from a Mission Enterprise Zone grant. Photo: Appleton Episcopal Ministries

“I see there being a move within the church to invest within this area,” Logue said. And while church planting plays a major role – Episcopal News Services recently profiled several examples of successful grant recipients – the church is investing in innovation at all levels, including in established congregations and by dioceses.

Eight resolutions have been assigned to the Evangelism and Church Planting Committee so far, though more may be added by the July 6 filing deadline. Among them is a measure (A030) submitted by Executive Council to renew funding of a small evangelism grant program at $100,000.

Those grants are limited to $2,000 for congregations and up to $8,000 for dioceses or regional ministries, and typically they support one-time events rather than the ongoing work of church plants, Logue said. Like church plants, some of these smaller initiatives may provide models for new ministries churchwide.

“We’ve seen some good things happen with a small amount of money,” said Logue, who serves as canon to the ordinary in the Diocese of Georgia.

Evangelism is one of three priorities that General Convention set for the current triennium, along with racial reconciliation and care of creation. The three will serve as focal points for separate joint sessions of General Convention in a new series of panel discussions called TEConversations.

The discussion of evangelism will be at 2:30 p.m. July 7, and the panel will feature the Rev. Lauren Winner, a priest and author; Iowa Bishop Alan Scarfe, who led revivals at every congregation in his diocese last year, and the Rev. Daniel Velez-Rivera, a church planter in the Diocese of Virginia. The racial reconciliation discussion is July 6. Care of creation will be the topic July 10.

All three priorities inform the Episcopal Church’s mission, and they relate to each other, said California Bishop Marc Andrus, who is co-chair of an advisory body that submitted a resolution (A019) on the intersection of evangelism, church planting and care of creation. The Advisory Council on the Stewardship of Creation’s resolution calls for creation of a task force to study and encourage those connections.

“They’re not really separate things,” Andrus said, and while many church plants already approach their work by incorporating racial reconciliation and environmental stewardship into their evangelism, he hopes the proposed task force would provide the groundwork for making that approach commonplace.

“An integrated approach to planting churches and evangelism is a healthy way of doing evangelism,” he said. “It relates to the one spirit of Christ, who’s not divided. Christ doesn’t prefer one cause of justice over another.”

The Rev. Stephanie Johnson, the advisory council’s other co-chair, agrees.

“By recognizing that care of creation is central to our faith, we understand that reconciliation with all God’s creatures is part of who we are,” said Johnson, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Riverside, Connecticut.

This also might enhance the church’s outreach to younger generations, which was another consideration alluded to in the resolution submitted by the Advisory Council on the Stewardship of Creation.

“It’s important to them to know that the church cares about their future and the generations that come after them,” Johnson said.

Some resolutions assigned to the evangelism committee are intended to continue work already underway, such the budgetary resolution submitted by the Genesis Advisory Group on Church Planting and Executive Council’s resolution on small evangelism grants. Executive Council also submitted a resolution (A031) to affirm the creation of a new staff officer position to help administer the church planting network.

Another resolution submitted by the Genesis Group (A006) calls for the collection of demographic info about the church leaders behind new evangelism ministries, so that data can be compared with info on the communities they are trying to serve.

The resolution doesn’t call for any further action in response to that information, but Logue, who is the Executive Council liaison to the Genesis Group, said simply having that information may encourage ministers to think more about representation. A Latino outreach ministry, for example, would benefit from Latino leaders, just as it makes sense to have a young person taking the lead in a ministry that targets millennials.

Other resolutions ask General Convention to commend advisory bodies’ findings to the church. One of those is the Evangelism Charter (A029) drafted by Executive Council’s Local Ministry & Mission Committee to promote a common language for describing and carrying out the work of evangelism.

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry on the evening of Nov. 17 helps start the Diocese of San Joaquin’s three-day revival. The kickoff event was held on the campus of the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Photo: Mary Frances Schjonberg/Episcopal News Service

Curry has led the way in the past 16 months by presiding at large, public revivals in dioceses around the church, but despite the presiding bishop’s talk of being part of the “Jesus Movement,” many Episcopalians may not fully understand the call to evangelism underlying that term, Logue said. The Evangelism Charter, then, is a reference point for common action.

Logue, too, stressed it is important not to construe evangelism as suggesting the Episcopal Church or Episcopalians have all the answers. Evangelism “will also change us,” he said.

The report takes a deep theological dive into what it means to promote evangelism in a contemporary world where much of our communication with other people happens online.

“Our call to share the Good News does not go away when we log on to Facebook or Instagram,” the white paper says. “We have the opportunity to follow the Holy Spirit’s invitation into a joyful, surprising adventure that changes us as much as it changes the people and communities we encounter.”

Much of the document’s advice will be useful for Episcopal evangelists working on any platform, from street corners to cyberspace. Walker Adams, the task force’s chair, said social media is a valuable tool for evangelism, but a digital evangelist still needs to ground that work in a personal faith journey.

“I think it would be best if we spent some time thinking about who we are, what we believe and how we articulate that,” said Adams, a Diocese of West Missouri member now working in admissions at Sewanee: The University of the South. “If we can’t come up with sort of the basic concepts of sharing your own story and your own relationship with Jesus, it doesn’t really matter how you put it online.”

General Convention called for creation of the task force in 2015, to develop a curriculum for digital evangelism. At the same time, Adams said, Curry’s efforts as chief evangelism officer “really brought evangelism to the forefront,” including through the hiring of the Rev. Stephanie Spellers, canon for evangelism, reconciliation and creation care, and Jeremy Tackett, digital evangelist. Curry’s evangelism team created something called the Evangelism Toolkit, intended to train Episcopalians at all levels in new ways of sharing their faith.

Adams’ task force submitted a second resolution (A082) asking General Convention for $100,000 to follow through with such training. One option, he said, would be to identify a digital evangelism point person in each diocese who can work with congregations and parishioners. Rather than waiting for the presiding bishop’s staff to visit every congregation, it may be more effective to train more regional trainers.

“I think evangelism isn’t something that can wait,” Adams said. “The church is wrapped up I evangelism now. The church is excited.”

Spellers told ENS in an email that she, too, is excited about where the continuing conversation about evangelism will lead at General Convention.

“Walking into this General Convention, our church now has dozens of vibrant new ministries with the coaching and support and training Convention dreamed of,” Spellers said. “We’ve seen two Evangelism Matters summits and conferences and launched a network of Episcopal Evangelists. We’ve partnered with dioceses to organize six Episcopal Revivals and trained more than a thousand evangelists in those host communities. We’ve got a comprehensive, multilingual, online set of resources called the Evangelism Toolkit and a new Evangelism Grants program.

“If ‘Episcopal Evangelism’ was an oxymoron before, those days are over.”

[Episcopal News Service] A group of bishops has proposed a compromise on the question of whether the president of the House of Deputies should be paid, an issue that has proved divisive at previous General Conventions.

The compromise comes as the result of Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s desire for the issue to get a “full and fair conversation” in the House of Bishops, Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania Sean Rowe told Episcopal News Service June 28.

That conversation began informally at the March House of Bishops meeting. Rowe and the group then crafted Resolution B014 that would direct the church’s Executive Council to pay the House of Deputies president director’s fees “for specific services rendered in order to fulfill duties required by the church’s Constitution and Canons.”

The resolution, and others related to the issue, will be debated during the July 5-13 meeting of General Convention in Austin, Texas.

Corporations typically pay director’s fees to board members for providing services to the corporation. Rowe acknowledged that directors of non-profit corporations and organizations are not always compensated in the same way. However, he said, “it does happen.”

Resolution B014 addresses two important concerns that the bishops group gleaned from the conversations, Rowe said. One was that the House of Deputies’ president role requires a significant enough time commitment that some aspects of the work need to be compensated. The other concern was that the compensation should happen in a way that does not change the polity of the church.

Providing director fees, the resolution’s explanation says, “does not alter the governing documents of the Episcopal Church or the scope and responsibilities of the position.”

Rowe officially proposed the resolution and Diocese of Southern Ohio Bishop Tom Breidenthal and Diocese of Western New York Bishop Bill Franklin are the endorsers.

The question of a salary for the now-unpaid position of House of Deputies president prompted a rare conference committee between bishops and deputies in the waning hours of the last convention. The 2015 meeting of convention eventually agreed to postpone making a decision, instead calling for the presiding bishop and the president of the House of Deputies to appoint a task force to study the issue.

Diane Pollard, who chaired the task force, told Episcopal News Service that she appreciates the effort at a compromise solution and supports Rowe’s resolution.

“We can do no less than to come together around this issue and move it forward in a definitive way in which it can be effective,” she said. “If [Rowe’s] resolution will do that, fine. If they want to take [the task force’s] resolution and do it, that’s fine, too.”

Pollard said the issue of compensation is both a justice issue for any potential holder of the office and an issue of widening the pool of those potential candidates. “You either have to be wealthy or old, because you have to have income,” she said. “You give up a lot.”

She added that despite the tendency to personalize the issue, “this is not about getting a salary for an incumbent.”

In addition to chairing the House of Deputies during convention, the president also is canonically required to serve as vice chair of Executive Council and vice president of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, or DFMS, the nonprofit corporate entity through which the Episcopal Church owns property and does business. He or she has a wide swath of appointment powers. The president also travels around the church, speaking at conferences and other gatherings, meeting with deputies and other Episcopalians.

The position, which is filled by election during each meeting of convention, has a travel budget and a paid assistant. Each president is limited to three consecutive terms.

The president’s role has been changing since 1967 when the convention gave the position a three-year term instead of simply being elected to preside during convention. It also made the president the vice chair of Executive Council and thus a vice president of the DFMS, and defined the president’s authority in making appointments. Rowe’s resolution notes that expansion of the duties of the office has paralleled an expansion of the presiding bishop’s role.

The deputies who served on the task force have issued questions and answers about the issue of compensating the president of the House of Deputies.

Meanwhile, Province IV of the church proposes a different approach to the salary issue. Its Resolution C042 would have Executive Council set what it calls per diem compensation for the president when she or he is at council meetings, consults with the presiding bishop in making appointments required by canon, and when doing official work related to General Convention. Calling it a way to address the “short-term the fairness issue of compensating the president,” the resolution also proposes that a special task force “clarify and enumerate the comprehensive role” of the president.

The issue of compensating that officeholder has been discussed for decades. General Convention considered the salary issue in 1997, 2000 and 2015. Each time, Rowe said, the deputies were clear each time that they wanted to see their president compensated.

Supporters of the change say making the office a paid job would broaden the pool of people able to consider running for election. No House of Deputies president has held regular paid employment since the election in 1985 of the Very Rev. David Collins, who retired early at age 62 from his position as dean of the cathedral in Atlanta in order to adequately carry out his presidential duties, according to the report.

The task force suggested that only people who are older and/or have what it called favorable “personal economic circumstances” can realistically hold the office. Thus, presidents are not always chosen based solely on gifts and skills, the members said.

“The task force came to the conclusion that providing a salary for the president of the House of Deputies is not only a good thing, but also essential for the growth of the Episcopal Church,” the task force said. “Moreover, it is demanded by good stewardship of the human resources entrusted to us in those who would devote their full-time service to the Episcopal Church.”

Other disagree, some saying they fear “mission creep” in the form of an expansion of the president’s duties and authority.

Some cite Resolution A099 proposed to this convention that would allow the president to call a meeting of the House of Deputies at times other than the triennial gathering of convention.

[Episcopal News Service] The 79th meeting of General Convention will ponder the Episcopal Church’s role in and response to the #MeToo movement with resolutions, reflections and the hope for reconciliation.

In what could be an extraordinary session, the House of Bishops is inviting Episcopalians to a “Liturgy of Listening” event. The July 4 session, planned for 5:15 to 7 p.m. CT in the worship space set up in the Austin Convention Center, has been called “a sacred space for listening and further reconciliation.”

Meanwhile, close to 30 related resolutions have been filed. The bulk of them are from the 47 members of the special House of Deputies Committee on Sexual Harassment and Exploitation appointed in February by the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, deputies’ president.

Purpose and shape of ‘Liturgy of Listening’

Diocese of Central New York Bishop DeDe Duncan-Probe, who chairs the House of Bishops’ Pastoral Response to #MeToo Planning Team, hopes that the groundwork for convention’s debate and passing of resolutions aimed at ending sexual harassment and exploitation will be set during the liturgy. Planned for the day before convention formally opens, participants will be invited to open themselves to the idea that sexual harassment and exploitation happen “because we aren’t seeing the image of Christ in one another.”

The session, Duncan-Probe told Episcopal News Service, will be anchored in the idea that Episcopalians believe in the transformational power of liturgy. “We come in our pain and our sorrow, and we hold it before God’s dream for the church and God’s mercy and grace,” she said. “As we do that, Jesus is in our midst and we have a moment where a new future is possible.”

The bishops in May invited Episcopalians to “share reflections on sexual harassment, abuse and exploitation,” saying that a selection of the reflections, with no names attached, would be read as part of the liturgy. The planning team later clarified the confidential nature of the process for receiving and sharing those reflections. Planners have stressed that the session is not a clergy discipline, or Title IV, hearing.

About 40 people chose to share their stories with the planning team, and 10 will be read aloud during the service by bishops. The stories will be told in the first person with no identifying details. Even the so-called “reading bishops” do not know the name of the person whose story they will read, Duncan-Probe said. Using the first-person voice, she said, “when you hear something in the first person, you automatically project yourself into it.”

She said that “most of the time, these stories are told in secret. They are told in private to a bishop with a chancellor present, and it’s all confidential. And then they’re whispered about at coffee hour and told behind the water cooler, but never have we gathered as a church and heard these stories told out loud without any hidden agenda.”

The liturgy, which will be live streamed here, was specifically written by the team for this purpose and will have a simple structure, Duncan-Probe said. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry with invite those present into “sacred listening.” Each story will be prayed over and meditated on in silence. The bishops who will be seated throughout the congregation will stand and repent their role in damage that has been done. All participants will also be asked to repent the times they were “silent observers” and predators, failed to honor one another and failed to recognize one another as beloved children of God.

“Some hard things are going to be said that I think will be a surprise because people have thought that this was going to be c.y.a. by the bishops or something like that,” Duncan-Probe, said.

There will be a pastoral response team made up of clinical psychologists, therapists and spiritual directors available before, during and after the service and throughout General Convention, she said. Moreover, a group of people who understand the Title IV clergy disciplinary procedures will also be available to help explain that process.

Resolutions coming to convention

The House of Deputies committee’s 24 resolutions focus on inclusive theology and language; disparities in pay, hiring, leave and pensions; changes to the Title IV disciplinary process and training; truth and reconciliation; and systemic social justice beyond the church. Jennings, who chaired the committee, told Episcopal News Service via email that the committee has “worked efficiently, collaborative and creatively to draft an impressive array of legislation. The Rev. Ruth Meyers, an alternate deputy in the Diocese of California, was vice-chair of the committee, and Jennings said she “led an enormous amount of work on a tight timeline.” Jennings said she is grateful to Meyers and to “all of the women whose efforts are leading the Episcopal Church to confess our sins of gender-based discrimination, harassment and violence against women and girls and to end the systemic sexism, misogyny and misuse of power that plague the church and the culture.”

The roots of the listening session and the resolutions coming to convention are in a Jan. 22 letter from Curry and Jennings, calling on Episcopalians to spend Lent and beyond examining the church’s history and its handling or mishandling of cases of sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse. Curry and Jennings said in the letter to the church that they wanted General Convention to discuss these issues because they “want to hear the voice of the wider church as we determine how to proceed in both atoning for the church’s past and shaping a more just future.”

Jennings appointed the special deputies committee after she said she had be contacted by “scores of women” who wanted to share their stories.

[Anglican Communion News Service] Nearly half of Church of England churches have fewer than five under 16-year olds, a report to next month’s General Synod says. But the Church is seeking to change this through a new Youth Evangelism Task Group chaired by the Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, Paul Williams; who has also become the lead bishop on youth evangelism. The Church has also appointed a national Youth Evangelism Officer, Jimmy Dale, as part of “structural change” designed to tackle “the challenge the Church of England faces in reaching and discipling young people.”

[Episcopal News Service] Although capacious churches, glorious choirs, multiple clergy and the smells and bells of Holy Day services may capture the imagination of Episcopalians, the reality is that the majority of congregations in the Episcopal Church tend toward the smaller size with often dramatically different backdrops and ministerial needs than large churches.

In fact, according to data presented by the Task Force on Clergy Leadership Formation in Small Congregations, 69 percent of Episcopal congregations have an average Sunday attendance of less than 100, placing them in the category of “small congregation.” To take this even further, bishops surveyed by the task force reported that a “substantial minority” of their congregations number less than 20 on an average Sunday.

Recognizing their unique needs and issues, the 78th General Convention three years ago asked for a task force to “develop a plan for quality formation for clergy in small congregations that is affordable, theologically reflective and innovative.”

In other words, the task force was charged with recommending steps to provide the “resources to help God’s mission go forward” in small congregations, the Rev. Susanna Singer said in a telephone interview. And unless more and different resources are provided, she added, the traditional model of seminary trained clerics serving small congregations cannot be sustained.

Singer serves as chair of the task force and is also associate professor of ministry development at Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California.

Among the issues facing small congregations is that many are located in rural communities and often remote locales that may not appeal to clergy, especially those fresh out of seminary, she said. Since most seminaries are in cities, Singer said seminarians tend to remain in urban areas

“The pool of people who are discerning ministries are not in rural areas,” she said. “Persuading traditionally formed clergy to move to rural areas is difficult for small congregations.”

Another headwind that small congregations confront is their inability to pay a full-time rector or compete financially with what large, urban congregations can offer. Consequently, small congregations may need to rely on clergy who serve with little or no pay or have vocations in addition to the ministry.

“The findings of the task force indicate that in the future, an increasing number of ordained ministers in the Episcopal Church will be non-stipendiary or bi-vocational,” the task force’s report concluded. “The data also shows that small congregations will depend more heavily on these clergy.

To confront these challenges, the task force will propose a pair of resolutions to present to the General Convention next month in Austin aimed at improving clergy and licensed lay leadership formation in small congregations and to provide funding for theological education and formation for those wishing to serve small congregations through non-traditional pathways.

“To meet the need of small congregations for clergy and to avoid burdening these clergy with substantial debt, new strategies to provide funding for their theological education are needed,” the report said.

To prepare its recommendations, the task force first identified specific areas to concentrate its focus. These include the capacities and skills considered most necessary for clergy and lay leaders in small congregations, ways to financially support those seeking ordination to serve in small congregations, how to encourage more under-represented populations to serve as lay leaders and ordained ministers, and how to better share and make available formation, theological and educational resources.

The task force also conducted a survey of bishops, canons and chairs of commissions on ministry to obtain their input. Although lay members of small congregations were not specifically included in the survey, a number of those surveyed had experience in these settings. The task force considered surveying small and rural congregations but concluded it was not feasible to obtain a representative and valid sampling.

Based on its work, the task force concluded that there is “already a wealth of resources available for leadership formation” from many different cultural and theological orientations. The problem, however, is the lack of awareness of the existence of the resources, the lack of staff to access them and a “siloing” effect that hinders the sharing of resources throughout the Episcopal Church.

“Small dioceses don’t have the kind of staffing to find the resources,” Singer said. “People only know about a narrow sliver of what’s out there.”

Another area of identified needs was “for robust discernment and formation for clergy and lay leadership so that small congregations…may be most effectively served,” the task force said.

Availability of “appropriate and culturally-sensitive vocational discernment and formation materials and strategies for clergy leaders called from ethnic minority communities” was also found to be lacking. And “there is also a clear need for greater availability of suitable resources in Spanish.”

When the task force submitted its report for the General Convention’s Blue Book, it requested $900,000 in Resolution A022 to create a “Formation Networking Team” to serve as a referral hub for existing and specially developed resources for the discernment of clergy and lay vocations, formation and training.

The task force met the early deadline requirements for submissions to the convention’s reports but has done “substantial work” and interviews after its initial report was submitted, Singer said.

Based on its subsequent work and interviews, the task force intends to submit a substitute resolution that combines its proposed Resolutions A022 through A026. The substitute resolution will reduce its budget request to $300,000 by relying more on part-time team members with minimal stipends “just so we have a chance” to get its funding approved, Singer said.

Another significant change planned for the substitute resolution concerns renaming the proposed Formation Networking Team name as the Theological Education Networking Team (TENT) to make it “more indicative” of its purpose and goal, she said.

The task force also submitted Resolution A027 which would direct the Executive Council to establish a committee to “develop and implement a plan to provide need-based central scholarship funding to individuals pursuing theological education to serve as priests or deacons” in small congregations on a non-stipendiary positions or in bi-vocational basis.

Singer said the task force was presented with an “enormous task” but focused its work on generating a plan that is doable and a start, not the “do all, end all. It’s very concrete and specific and will probably open the doors for other developments. It provides a stepping stone.”

— Mike Patterson is a San Antonio-based freelance writer and correspondent for the Episcopal News Service. He is a member of ENS General Convention reporting team and can be reached at rmp231@gmail.com

The meeting happened in the evening June 25 just before the first of a series of U2 concerts in New York on the band’s Experience + Innocence tour. A photo released by the band shows the foursome posing with Curry.

“I know of no other group that has sung and witnessed more powerfully to the way of love than U2,” Curry said June 27 in a written statement to Episcopal News Service. “It was a real blessing to sit with them to talk about Jesus, the way of love, and changing our lives and the world. They are an extraordinary community gift to us all.”

U2, which formed in Ireland in the late 1970s, has been one of the most popular rock bands in the world for more than 30 years, and Bono – among that rarefied group of musicians known globally by a single name – makes headlines these days as much for his support for humanitarian causes as for his music.

Curry, too, has become something of a minor global celebrity since his sermon on the power of love at the royal wedding on May 19. After the wedding, he was invited to discuss the sermon on a dizzying variety of media outlets, from the BBC to celebrity gossip site TMZ. Curry told ENS last month that he sees the sudden attention as a unique opportunity for evangelism, as he tries in interviews to bring the conversation around to what he often calls the “Jesus Movement.”

Reclaiming Jesus is a new initiative he spearheaded this year with the Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners to address “a dangerous crisis of moral and political leadership at the highest levels of our government and in our churches” and to affirm what it means to be followers of Jesus in today’s world.

U2 and Bono have not yet commented publicly on Reclaiming Jesus, though Curry said he spoke with them about its origins and intention.

“I shared with them our commitment to reclaim Jesus of Nazareth as the center of Christian faith and life,” Curry said in his statement to ENS. “And this means a way of faith with love of God and Love of neighbor at the core. A love that is not sentimental but a disciplined commitment and spiritual practice infusing every aspect of life, personally, intra personally and politically.”

[Anglican Communion News Service] The trio of singing clergy known as The Three Cantors bought joy wherever they performed. But the consecration of group member William Cliff as bishop of Brandon in 2016 put an end to their exploits.

But, in response to a “pastoral emergency” in Churchill, Manitoba, the group reformed for a special concert in front of around 70 of the town’s 900 residents. The town of Churchill has suffered from the closure of its two major employers. Flooding has forced the closure of the rail lines, and the only way in and out of Churchill is by plane.